Zojoji Temple, Shiba - Kawase Hasui Phone Case

Snow keeps its own appointment at Zojoji Temple, Shiba, and Kawase Hasui arrives to take the minutes. His 1925 Japanese woodblock print from Twenty Views of Tokyo now wraps a phone case, built tough enough for Tokyo commutes. Vermilion lacquer burns through a slate gray sky. The Sangedatsumon gate, raised for the Tokugawa shogunate in 1622, shoulders a roof of packed white. Flakes pepper every beam. A snow-laden pine claws down from above. Then the woman. Her oiled-paper umbrella tilts into the gust, a straw-gold moon with its ribs showing. Violet and ink-black kimono sleeves whip sideways as her geta press small doubts into the drift. Hasui created this two years after the Great Kanto earthquake burned his sketchbooks. Watanabe Shozaburo's carvers stacked bokashi gradations until shin-hanga could hold weather in wood. Zojoji's Pure Land Buddhism promised a western paradise. Hasui found one closer, a Taisho-era snowstorm and a woman walking home.